Dr. John D. Halamka Keynote Address: Leveraging AI to Improve Community Health

3 days ago | Jasmine Souers | @jasminesouers

As president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, John D. Halamka, M.D., is helping to shape how artificial intelligence (AI) is used in medicine. During his keynote at the 2025 Community Partnership Summit, “Leveraging AI to Improve Community Health,” Dr. Halamka challenged the audience to rethink the future of healthcare—not just as a technological endeavor, but as a human one.

Rooted in Community

Dr. Halamka began by reflecting on his four decades in medicine, emphasizing his commitment to community. “All of my medical training has been in community and county hospitals serving the underserved and the under resourced,” he shared. “For 30 years, I had a fair amount of experience asking the question, how do you reach those on the other side of the digital divide?”

Three Stories That Changed Everything

Rather than launching straight into technology, Dr. Halamka grounded his presentation in three personal stories—his wife’s battle with breast cancer, his father-in-law’s late-stage pancreatic cancer, and his father’s long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Each story illustrated the limitations of one-size-fits-all medicine and the urgent need for personalized, data-driven care.

He recounted, “We would love to personalize every cure for every patient at every site of care, regardless of whether it’s an academic medical center, a federally qualified health center, or a critical access hospital. How do we do that?”

The Mayo Clinic Platform: Innovation with Purpose

Mayo Clinic Platform is a bold initiative that brings together solution developers, data partners, and healthcare service providers to transform healthcare. It supports innovation and collaboration around secure, de-identified clinical data to create, validate and scale digital health tech solutions to the world.

Dr. Halamka explained how Mayo Clinic, working closely with patient advisory boards, de-identified 150 years of patient data. This process went far beyond removing names and birthdates. Contextual clues—such as geography, job roles, and life events—were also addressed to prevent re-identification.

Without selling or shipping data, innovators are invited into a secure environment where they can develop and test AI tools without removing data or compromising patient privacy.

This model has already supported:

60 companies graduating from Mayo’s accelerator
Over 100 companies developing healthcare innovations using de-identified data

Augmented Intelligence, Not Replacing Care

Throughout his keynote, Dr. Halamka emphasized a critical distinction: AI should strengthen, not replace, human care.

In cardiology, affordable home devices can now transmit data directly to health systems, where AI analyzes heart function, valve issues, and oxygen levels, often eliminating the need for unnecessary clinic visits.

In cancer care, AI models now help design radiation therapy plans remotely, allowing hospitals without specialized experts to deliver the same quality and safety of care.

“The doctors are still caring for the patient,” Dr. Halamka explained. “The AI is helping create the treatment plan.”

AI is also reducing administrative burden. New tools automatically interpret nurse-patient conversations to generate documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time with patients and less time on keyboards.

Why This Work Matters

Dr. Halamka closed with urgency. Global birth rates are declining, meaning fewer doctors and nurses, while lifespans continue to increase, extending the years people need care.

“These innovations are not optional,” he said. “They’re the only way we can get every person, every family, the care they need, regardless of location or circumstance.”

For Dr. Halamka, AI isn’t about efficiency or scale alone. It’s about responsibility.

“That’s where I’m spending the next 20 years of my life,” he concluded. “This gets me out of bed every morning.”